Feed aggregator

Campaigners attack government request to be allowed to breach Monday deadline to publish air quality plan

The government is facing renewed pressure after a last-minute attempt to delay the publication of its plan to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis.

Ministers were under a court direction to produce tougher draft measures to tackle illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution, which is largely caused by diesel traffic, by 4pm on Monday. The government’s original plans had been dismissed by judges as so poor as to be unlawful.

Continue reading...

Lawrence English and Philip Samartzis base their musical practice on the engagement with the sounds of everyday life and turn it into art.

Many brands use the word organic on labels when their products are not certified as such, warns Soil Association

The makers of many “organic” beauty products have been accused of confusing and meaningless labelling, according to a new survey in which 76% of consumers admitted they felt misled.

According to the Soil Association’s recent market report, sales of organic health and beauty products swelled by more than 20% in 2016, with the market now worth about £61.2m in the UK.

Continue reading...

Australia's energy market is in a holding pattern while we wait for court decisions, the full Finkel Report, policy announcements, auction process developments and legislation to set the path forward.

Deutsch Bank becomes latest to revise up its near-term global solar forecast, off the back of further reduction in costs and a potential post-Trump “gold rush” in the US market.

Stamford, Lincolnshire Discovering that a footpath named the Jurassic Way not only glanced my door but set off from it, I decided to walk it piecemeal

It took 10 years of living here before I looked hard at my town’s Ordnance Survey map. There, like most who neglect study of their closest ground, I saw my daily familiar articulated in a diagrammatic, unfamiliar way. Here notable historic echoes inscribed alongside its present. And I discovered that a footpath named the Jurassic Way not only glanced my door but set off from it, travelling 88 miles from this old Lincolnshire town to the unlikely end of Banbury, traversing a ridge-seam of limestone that gave Stamford its stone and the route its name. Drawn, it presents like a diagonal scratch across the belly of England.

With spring here I decided to walk it piecemeal, beginning today with the first mile. With the town’s spires to my back I cross the floodplain of the meadow, joining the bank of the Welland. Its banks are plump with green, the water still but for the odd ripple from a surfacing fish. The path is a balding in the grass.

Continue reading...

SA might soon add a new clean feather to its cap, announcing plans to go heavily into the hydrogen industry.

For 30 years anti-pollution campaigner Wendy Bowman has stood firm against mining giants, supporting other landowners under pressure to sell

Each morning just after dawn, if you stop at the top of the hill that separates the town of Singleton from the tiny village of Camberwell in New South Wales, says Wendy Bowman, “you’ll see this brown scud across the sky”.

“It doesn’t go over the ridges; it stays in the valley, going up and down all the time.” She mimes a slow sieving motion: up, down.

Continue reading...

Forced into the militia as a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rodrigue Katembo has now been awarded a Goldman prize for risking his life fighting to protect his country’s wildlife

As an enforced child soldier, Rodrigue Katembo saw his little brother die and had to carry the news to his mother. Now 41, he remains on the frontline – but today he protects the extraordinary wildlife in the national parks of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from armed militias.

It is exceptionally dangerous work: 160 park rangers have been killed protecting Virunga national park in the last 15 years, outnumbered 10 to one by militias and poachers. Around the world, about 1,000 rangers have died in the line of duty over the last decade. But Katembo, who is awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize on Monday, is resolute, despite the attacks he has endured and the risks he continues to run.

Continue reading...

Wendy Bowman, an 83-year-old farmer, has been given the Goldman environmental prize, awarded across six global regions for grassroots work. For three decades Bowman has fought the march of open-cut coalmines across the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, and helped organise her community to protect agricultural land and water

• Honour for activist farmer, 83, surrounded by mines on three sides

Continue reading...

An ex-child soldier who has spent years risking his life to fight illegal mining and wildlife poaching in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been given a prestigious award that honours 'environmental defenders' around the world.

Pitching Tasmania as a ‘renewable energy engine’ for the nation is probably clever politics , but the main problem is that it's simply fanciful.

Top picks of the clean cars at the latest New York Auto Show, including a Cadillac, an e-Golf and Kia's plug-in hybrid.

UK goes without coal power for 24 hours; a first since start of industrial revolution, but set to become "more and more common."

AEMC's fundamental blind spot on "environmental sustainability" is at the core of why the rule-maker is providing poor advice to COAG and why the system is failing.

Scenarios by Australian Market Operator suggest wind and solar could be capable of providing 80 per cent of South Australia's electricity demand within 5 years.

With the right power policies, gas can have a brighter future. Steven Bradley, CC BY-SA

Australia’s gas industry is under scrutiny from the competition watchdog after apparently failing to deliver on its pledge to bring down domestic prices and ease the east coast gas supply crisis.

The current domestic supply squeeze will be over soon enough. But other, longer-term factors threaten the role of gas in Australia’s energy mix.

Gas producers claim that gas is a vital fuel in the transition to a low-carbon economy (although not everyone agrees). But to achieve this they need to ensure that coal is replaced by gas in the generation of electricity. It is increasingly unlikely that this will happen in Australia, unless the industry can persuade the government to reinstate a price on carbon.

At the moment, the idea of gas as a transition fuel seems academic anyway. Gas is now in such short supply on the east coast that any policy aimed at increasing demand seems ludicrous. The shortage has driven gas prices to unprecedented levels, which has in turn has driven up electricity prices. In the gas industry, the talk is mainly about finding new supplies, not new customers.

But the present east coast gas shortage may well be shortlived, because there is currently an oversupply of gas on the international market. With prodding from government, this could bring about a drop in domestic prices in various ways.

For example, the liquid natural gas (LNG) exporters in Queensland who are sucking up so much of Australia’s gas might find it profitable to meet some of their international contract commitments by buying LNG on the international market and shipping it direct to their customers. This would release gas they have contracted to buy in Australia into the local market, thereby saving the (not inconsiderable) cost of liquefaction. This is the strategy of the gas swaps currently being touted as a solution to the domestic supply squeeze.

Alternatively, shiploads of LNG bought on the open market could be brought to southeast Australia, re-gasified, and then fed into the gas transmission system relatively close to the point of consumption, thus reducing transmission costs. This idea has been floated by gas producer AGL.

The government has not yet prodded hard enough to make these things happen, but a worsening gas crisis may stiffen its resolve.

Finally, extra supplies of Northern Territory gas will become available on the east coast when the Northern Gas Pipeline is completed next year.

None of these strategies depends on increasing the production of unconventional gas on the east coast, although that too, if it happened, might ease the domestic supply problem.

Crisis over?

In summary, there are grounds for thinking that in the reasonably short term we will see a significant increase in gas supply on the east coast, and a corresponding drop in price. As soon as that happens, the gas industry will again be interested in stimulating demand, particularly in the electricity sector. But by then it may be too late. Here’s why.

Without a national strategy that puts a price on carbon, the states will continue to go it alone with renewable energy targets. As the new renewable energy generators come online, they will push the most expensive generators out of business. Unfortunately for gas, even with more reasonable gas prices, coal-fired electricity will remain cheaper.

So, to the extent that the market can rely on renewables and coal alone, gas will be out of business. As large-scale battery storage becomes a reality, gas may not even be needed to cope with spikes in demand. Meanwhile, the current high price of power means the quiet revolution in rooftop solar panels is set to continue. The most recent data shows new installations are up 43% on a year ago.

There is, however, hope for gas in the medium term if the government legislates to impose a price on carbon in the electricity sector. One way to do this has already been widely proposed: an emissions intensity scheme.

Such a scheme would impose penalty payments on the most carbon-intensive emitters, such as coal-fired power stations and pay subsidies to lower-emitting industries such as renewables and gas.

This would put gas in a much better position to compete with coal, especially if the penalties were ratcheted up over time. Under modelling done for the Climate Change Authority, this would see brown coal power stations disappear within three years, while black coal would follow suit in little more than a decade.

Coal’s place would be taken mainly by wind and by new, efficient, gas-fired power stations. If by that time gas-fired power stations are able to capture and store their carbon dioxide emissions, then we would truly have arrived in a golden age for gas. If not, the gas industry will at least have had some profitable years before going into decline.

A price on carbon would let gas win the battle with coal and step in to take its place. Eventually, however, renewables will sweep away all fossil fuel power generation, so of course the long-term future for gas in this sector is bleak (as befits a transition fuel). But without a price on carbon, coal will be around for longer, undermining whatever market there may be for gas.

It is therefore in the gas industry’s interest to lobby hard for a price on carbon in the electricity sector, as part of the upcoming government review of climate policy. Other industry groups are virtually unanimous in their support for carbon pricing, but the oil and gas industry’s peak body, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, has been rather more equivocal. While in theory it supports a carbon price, it qualifies this support so extensively that in practice it opposes every pricing proposal that is placed on the table.

If the peak oil and gas body could be persuaded to join with the rest of industry on this matter, it might just make the difference. Pricing carbon is not only good for the environment, in the medium term it is good for gas too.

Andrew Hopkins is affiliated with the Climate Council and the Citizens' Climate Lobby.

Roadsides are often littered with rubbish and weeds but they are havens for rare flowers.

Campaign group Plantlife unveils list of top 10 endangered species and calls for better management of road verges that have become habitats of Britain’s flora

Some of the UK’s rarest plants are at risk of extinction unless action is taken to look after the road verges that have become their final refuge, a charity has warned.

Species such as fen ragwort and wood calamint are now only found on road verges, with fen ragwort hanging on in just one native spot near a burger van on the A142 in Cambridgeshire, conservation charity Plantlife said.

Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 27 April 1917

Reports of the arrival of the swallow are coming in thick and fast from all parts of the district; it is impossible to mention them in detail. A few straggled in earlier, but from the 16th onwards they have been arriving or passing in considerable numbers, and now the long-delayed sand martins are with them. On the 22nd a house martin was seen at Stretford. On the 21st, the cuckoo was calling in Hertforshire; we may expect it here any day. Willow wrens, too reported, but so far only odd bird; chiffchaffs, also very late, are now well distributed. Ring ousels and wheatears are on the moors, where twite, curlew, and golden plover are preparing for domestic duties.

Those who imagine that the course of Continental migration is disturbed or deflected should note a report from an officer at the front in France. On the 16th and 17th he saw scores of swallows and sand martins crossing the devastated land, and on the later date noted a house martin, a few tree pipits, two black redstarts, and three scoter ducks. A flock of linnets “insisted on sitting on a derelict bit of telegraph wire where shells fell continually. They were there day after day.” Even the resident birds are little troubled, for my friend adds: “Odd wrens and dunnocks are still in the flattened villages, and a few blackbirds and mistle thrushes.” Another friend comments upon the coltsfoot peeping out everywhere through the shell-torn ground. Nature’s healing touch!

Continue reading...